Hugues Fabrice Zango, winner of the triple jump at the World Athletics Indoor Championships Glasgow 24 (© Getty Images)
Hugues Fabrice Zango is no stranger to making history for his nation and following his performance at the World Athletics Indoor Championships Glasgow 24 on Saturday (2), the triple jump star now has another honour to add to the list.
The 30-year-old became Burkina Faso’s first ever Olympic medallist in Tokyo. His bronze in Doha in 2019 was the nation’s first World Athletics Championships medal and he upgraded it to silver in Oregon in 2022 and then gold in Budapest last August.
Now he has a first world indoor medal too – a gold after leaping 17.53m to surpass a strong opening effort by Algeria’s Yasser Mohammed Triki.
That first round 17.35m by Triki ended up being his only valid attempt of the competition and he passed his final three attempts.
After recording 16.69m from his own first attempt, Zango responded with 17.33m in the second round – just 2cm off Triki’s leading mark.
The top marks stayed the same until the fifth round, when Zango’s reaction after his leap hinted at how good it was. He jumped back up and started celebrating before ‘17.53m’ flashed up on the board and he moved into the lead.
Triki waited to see if anyone else could beat his mark and while Portugal’s Tiago Pereira became the third athlete to surpass 17 metres in the contest when he leapt 17.08m in the final round, the Olympic and world fifth-place finisher held on to silver.
Pereira’s final flourish secured him the bronze – a first global medal – with the second-best performance of his career behind the 17.11m PB he set outdoors in 2021.
Fang Yaoqing’s 16.93m from the second round had put him among the medals until Pereira pushed him down a place and he finished fourth.
“It's never easy to win a championship,” said Zango. “When I came here, I thought I might be able to do something but my season wasn't what I wanted. Tonight, I tried and tried and on my fifth jump it finally happened - doing 17.53m is really crazy.
“I'm really happy for Burkina Faso, for Africa, because in the final we have two Africans on the podium.”
For Pereira, his medal win was additional justification for his event switch in 2017.
“I feel amazing. My first medal in a major, with a PB – finally my work is starting to pay off,” he said.
“In 2017, when I had been doing the high jump for 12 years and I decided to switch to the triple jump, people said I was crazy. But to jump 17 metres and finally win a medal here is great.”
Jess Whittington for World Athletics
| MEN'S TRIPLE JUMP MEDALLISTS | ||
| 🥇 | Hugues Fabrice Zango 🇧🇫 BUR | 17.53m |
| 🥈 | Yasser Mohammed Triki 🇩🇿 ALG | 17.35m |
| 🥉 | Tiago Pereira 🇵🇹 POR | 17.08m |
| Full results | ||
